Covid-19 has highlighted the weakness in the system across industries, including supply chain, logistics, healthcare, enterprise, education, governance and fintech among others. It has also showcased the inability to deploy resources, and difficulties in capturing, sharing and managing the data in a secure, transparent and effective manner. These challenges have unleashed the true potential of blockchain.

Organisations including the World Health Organisation (WHO), Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, among other tech companies, government agencies and international bodies are all working together to develop the blockchain-based platforms and solutions.

For instance, IBM in partnership with HACERA recently launched its open-data platform to support Covid-19 response. The platform utilises data analytics and privacy tools that were previously only available to the elite financial institutions and adapted them for a public health context. It uses IBM Blockchain platform and IBM Cloud, where it helps identify errors or misreporting and seamlessly integrate credible new feeds.

In other words, it helps technologists, public health officials, hospitals and data scientists by giving them the data they need at scale to respond and devise solutions that can help curb the spread of the disease.

In India, several healthcare stakeholders are at various stages of planning, designing, implementing and adopting blockchain-based solutions to mitigate some of the key challenges. Both private and public healthcare systems are looking blockchain-based solutions for enabling electronic health records (EHR) systems to map health information such as health summary, prescription, vitals and reports. Hopefully, Covid-19 pandemic will accelerate the growth of blockchain adoption much faster than ever before as it is the need of the hour.

Blockchain Graph Of The Week:

According to Pulsehyip Solutions, the below-mentioned graph shows the increasing trend of the global blockchain adoption in financial services, followed by a small rise in tech, media, telecom, healthcare and consumer products among others.

Blockchain News Of The Week:

WEF Looks To Blockchain To Reset Global Economy, IBM Not Consulted

In an attempt to address the supply chain inefficiencies and failures that have been exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Economic Forum (WEF) published a report around the deployment of blockchain-based solutions. In addition to this, it has also launched ‘Redesigning Trust: Blockchain Deployment Toolkit,’ which is intended to help governments and businesses to maximise the benefits and minimise the risks caused due to Covid-19.

The new toolkit has been developed in collaboration with more than 100 public and private organisation across 50 countries, including Maersk, the World Bank, Deloitte and the World Food Program. Surprisingly, IBM is not on the list, especially given its specialisation and expertise in the blockchain space.

US Federal Agency Pilot Blockchain For Drone Transportation

The US Department of Transportation’s Volpe Center recently published a report where it talks about the idea of utilising unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones that would run on blockchain technology. The federal agency is looking to operating weapons for security purposes to transporting medical supplies, and ecommerce services. Further, the report explains the need for stronger protocols, which ensure private companies don’t interfere with government aviation protocols.

Samsung-Backed Startups Launches Blockchain Consortium

In an attempt to bolster the adoption of innovative technologies across the Middle East, African and Southeast Asian (MEASEA) regions, blockchain firms Aergo and Blocko, which are backed by Samsung and Sequoia Capital, have launched a DLT consortium. With this, the group seeks to advance practical applications of AI-integrated blockchain to generate economic opportunities that improve social outcomes, exploit new business models, and eliminate inefficiencies for governments and large corporations.

Author

Amit Raja Naik is a business journalist for Inc42 Media. A startup enthusiast, who loves to write about technology, people, process, culture and more. You can also find him regularly performing shows with his music band in Bengaluru, India.